On March 7, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) led a seven-member delegation from the U.S. to visit Haiti's constitutional Prime Minister Yvon Neptune and Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert, both of whom have been imprisoned in the National Penitentiary on trumped up charges by Haiti's illegal government.

Both Neptune and Privert are in failing health after undertaking a hunger strike over two weeks ago to demand that the illegal government either take them to trial or release them. Privert has been jailed without trial since last April and Neptune since last June.

One of the delegation's leaders, Ira Kurzban, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's lawyer, was blocked at the airport from entering Haiti. Kurzban was told by a U.S. Embassy official that the ban was on explicit orders from de facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue.

Other members of the delegation included Connecticut-based lawyer and activist Marguerite Laurent, California-based activist Margaret Prescod from Global Women's Strike, and Miami-based activist Lucie Tondreau of Veye Yo and the Haiti Action Committee. Dr. Serge Louis, a Haitian from New York, and Dr. Jean-Paul Bonnet, a North American from New Jersey, were also part of the delegation and checked the prisoners' health.

In an interview with Haïti Progrès, Congresswoman Waters explained that one of the purposes of the visit to Neptune was "to find out what his condition is and to see if we could in some way convince him to either discontinue the fast or to try and take temporary asylum in order to get some medical care and to avoid his death."

Neptune refused the delegation's entreaties and said he would continue his fast, on which he is only drinking water. "He will not run, he will not leave his country, and he will not seek asylum," Waters said

Waters said that Neptune "is very weak, very thin" and "was speaking barely above a whisper."

Lucie Tondreau told Haïti Progrès that Neptune said he "would rather die in Haiti if he was not to walk out of jail cleared of all the charges that have been put on him."

The illegal government has charged both Neptune and Privert with involvement in a supposed "massacre" on February 11, 2004 in St. Marc, an event which reporters and human rights groups almost universally agree never happened. Only the pro-coup U.S. government-backed National Coalition of Haitian Rights (NCHR) charges that some 50 people were slaughtered by pro-Lavalas partisans. Pierre Espérance, the NCHR's Haiti bureau chief, says that the remains of the supposed victims were "eaten by dogs" to explain the absence of any forensic evidence.

Ira Kurzban called Latortue's prohibition against his entry "a response to various articles and speeches I have given attacking the legitimacy of the Latortue government" and a sign of weakness. "If it was a strong government with popular support, whether I criticize it or not would not matter," he said. "But it is so fragile and so likely to collapse fairly soon that this was the typical kind of authoritarian response that demonstrates the weakness of the government."

Just after landing, an American Airlines agent boarded the plane and tried to prevent Kurzban from exiting. But Congresswoman Waters intervened and made sure Kurzban got off the plane.

Then the delegation was met on the tarmac by two U.S. Embassy officials "with cell-phones glued to their ears," according to Marguerite Laurent. They were Deputy Chargé de Mission (DCM) Douglas Griffiths and another official, Ellen Bienstock.

Griffiths told Kurzban that the de facto government intended to arrest him if he entered the country, Kurzban said. "Why don't they arrest me right here if they have something valid against me?" Kurzban responded. "It's just an excuse."

Although negotiations to win Kurzban's entry went on for more than an hour, eventually Kurzban decided that it would be better just to return to Miami on the plane he had flown in on. "I didn't want my entering or not entering Haiti to become the issue," Kurzban said. "I thought it more appropriate that the trip's focus remain on Prime Minister Neptune and Interior Minister Privert and their hunger strike."

Accompanied by the U.S. Embassy officials, the delegation then drove to the National Penitentiary, where they met for an hour and a half with Neptune, Privert, and former St. Marc delegate Marc Mathélier, who is also jailed without trial. The U.S. Embassy delegation hovered during the meeting, until Waters asked everybody to leave the cell so she could speak privately with Neptune.

Tondreau felt that Griffiths "had no business being there during the interview and dialogue we had with Mr. Neptune."

"I think he was there mostly for intimidation," she said.

The delegation had planned to drive to Pétionville to visit political prisoner Annette "So Anne" Auguste and then proceed to the Aristide Foundation for Democracy to hold a press conference. But as the delegation finished its visit at the penitentiary, Griffiths told them that going to Pétionville and Tabarre was "impossible because of safety reasons and he suggested that we go to the airport and do the press conference," Tondreau said.

The delegation went to the airport and held a press conference, but once again their trip was curtailed when Griffiths "told us there was a problem with the last plane we were supposed to take at about 4:00 p.m. and that we would have to board an earlier flight, which cut short our visit and press conference by two hours," Tondreau explained.

Father Gérard Jean-Juste was also obstructed from meeting the delegation at the airport and was almost arrested, Tondreau said. "For the airport press conference, he was not allowed to enter the diplomatic lounge to participate," she said. "Afterwards, the [police unit] CIMO encircled his presbytery residence at the St. Clare Church in Petit Place Cazeau and there was shooting around the church."

Despite the obstacles thrown up by the U.S. Embassy and Haiti's illegal government, the delegation members felt they had achieved their goal. "We were able to see the people in jail and witness first hand that the U.S. Ambassador is in fact the one running the country at this time," Tondreau said.

Congresswoman Waters also felt the delegation was a success. "Number one, Yvon Neptune knows that the world is watching, that we are paying attention and that he is not anonymous in his attempt to bring attention to what is going on in Haiti," she said. "Also I'm hopeful that we were able to bring attention to the situation, to frighten [the de facto government] that they have gone too far, embarrass them, and let them know that they are going to be judged based on what they are doing to Yvon Neptune."

by Marguerite Laurent
Last August, political activist Ron Daniels, who heads the New York-based Haiti Support Project, scandalized pro-democracy activists by organizing a cruise to commemorate the Haitian bicentennial with leaders of the U.S.-backed opposition front who had just helped overthrow Haiti's democratically elected government.

Today, Daniels is again working with pro-coup forces and presenting them as "honest brokers, mediators and facilitators, people who are not tied to or committed to any political party, organization or personality within the broad array of progressive forces in the popular movement for democracy in Haiti."

Daniels is convening a host of coup d'état participants, sympathizers and supporters for a March 17 and 18th symposium at the Rayburn Office Building in Washington, DC to supposedly "facilitate a serious and substantive assessment and dialogue about the state of affairs in Haiti with the objective of creating or contributing to momentum towards positive, workable solutions to Haiti's social, economic and political crises."

But Daniels' list of invitees reads like a who's-who of the very coup elite which torpedoed Haiti's democracy on February 29, 2004. They include: Frandley Julien, who led the "Group of 184" opposition front in Cap Haïtien and was the public face in Haiti for Daniel's "Cruising into History" junket last year; Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, a leader of the opposition-aligned Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), who supported and collaborated with armed "rebels" like death-squad leader Jodel Chamblain when they rolled into Hinche in early February 2004, murdering two policemen; Jocelyn "Johnny" McCalla, whose U.S.-State Department-supported National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR) has been lambasted for justifying the illegal imprisonment of Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert, as well as Deputy Amanus Mayette; Jim Morrell of the Washington-based Haiti Democracy Project, which was the coup's think-tank and propaganda clearinghouse; Lionel Delatour of the Center for Free Enterprise and Democracy (CLED), a U.S. State Department-supported businessmen's group which has fought Haiti's democratic forces for almost two decades; Gabriel Marcella from the U.S. Army War College, who recently advocated in U.S. newspapers that Haiti become an international "protectorate" run by Washington and its allies; Alix Baptiste, the illegal, coup-installed Minister for Haitians Living Abroad; and a gaggle of other U.S. government officials and quasi-officials from agencies like USAID and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).

We should also note that no less than three representatives of Frandley Denis' National Civic Movement are set to attend.

Is it conceivable that Ron Daniels, who postures as a progressive, can be inviting this patently anti-democratic crowd to discuss "workable solutions" at this hellish juncture in Haiti's most recent coup d'état? It makes about as much sense as 9-11 survivors inviting Osama Bin Laden to the Rayburn Building in Washington to sit with Congressional members and discuss the future of the United States. It is like asking the Ku Klux Klan to come discuss the future civil rights and development of African-Americans in the U.S. after the murders of Emmett Till, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., or the Mississippi civil rights workers.

The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) has walked in the past year, since the U.S.-backed and implemented coup d'état, hand-in-hand with the poor disenfranchised masses of Haiti, with the majority who disagrees with the coup and denounces illegal Prime Minister Gérard Latortue's murderous death squads. Our collaborators have walked with the people of Belair, Cité Soleil, Cité de Dieu, Fort National, Milot, Cap Haïtien, and those throughout the provinces outside of Port-au-Prince who face the coup d'etat's military forces and this U.S.-backed and illegitimate Latortue regime. We support the women who have been raped, the street children shot while they sleep, the political prisoners, the families forced into exile, and the refugees who cannot find asylum or Temporary Protected Status.

We know who has unequivocally denounced the coup d'état, fought for the principles and process of democracy, and been on the firing line in this merciless attack against Haitian self-determination and sovereignty. We have stood with the Black Caucus, the African Union, Caricom and the people's leaders on the populous streets of Haiti. We bear witness and can credibly point to many who joined the Haitian majority in their long walk to freedom as a new chapter began on Feb. 29, 2004. In that walk, we have not run into the organizers of "Cruising into History." Au contraire. They were one of our adversaries.

In the ranks of those fighting for Haiti's dignity and respect for the one-person-one-vote principle, we certainly did not meet the pro-coup representatives who make up almost 80% of the symposium invitees and whom Ron Daniels calls "honest brokers" ready to discuss the future of democracy and development in Haiti.

How is it possible that those who participated in the destabilization and ouster of the constitutional government such as Jim Morrell, Frandley Denis Julien, and Chavannes Jean-Baptiste can now have ANY credibility to sit down and dialogue about a democratic future for Haiti? And what about the people denouncing the coup? Why is Ron Daniels not getting confirmation of attendance to his shindig from the champions of democracy, from organizations who have sent delegations to Haiti in 2004 to report on the human rights situation, organizations such as EPICA, Pax Christi, Miami Law Center, Haiti Accompaniment Project, Amnesty International, National Lawyers Guild, the Haiti Commission of Inquiry, the International Labor/Religious/Community (ILRC) and the Haiti Action Committee.

Are these pro-democracy activists not "honest brokers"? If they were invited, why have they decided to not attend? Why are organizations such as Haiti Action Committee, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, International Action Center, Fondasyon Trant Septanm, Veye Yo, New England Organization for Human Rights in Haiti, Haiti Support Network (HSN), Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners in Haiti, the Resistance Movement of the Popular Bases (MRBP), the Communication Commission for Fanmi Lavalas, Vwa Zansèt, AUMOHD Dwa Moun, Haiti Information Project, Haitkaah Social Justice Project, Ottawa Haiti Solidarity Committee (OHSC) and so many other pro-democracy forces not "honest brokers, facilitators and mediators" but Haiti Democracy Project, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, Frandley Denis Julien, and Ron Daniels are? Why are so many pro-democracy groups not participating in this symposium?

Is this a repeat of the symposium that was held on Dec. 10 and 11th in Canada where the Canadian government invited "leaders in the Haitian community abroad" who were simply coup-d'état leaders while pro-democracy groups with credibility among the grassroots movement for democracy in Haiti were not invited or welcomed at this meeting? Is Ron Daniels taking a leaf out of Canadian Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew's book and now plotting to legitimize this idea of "protectorate" with the Chalabis in the United States?

Where are the Haitian diaspora's representatives who have fought for Haitian rights, who never called for the coup d'etat and denounced it after it had taken place? On Daniel's list, why are there so few undisputed supporters and delegates from Fanmi Lavalas, Haiti's most powerful political party, who are in New York, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Canada, and France?

Even if pro-democracy forces were to sit down with pro-coup people (which pro-coup forces always refused to do before they took power), at least the symposium's participants should accurately represent Haiti's democratic reality. Without question, the vast majority of Haitians oppose the coup while only a tiny minority supports it. The symposium at present has these proportions reversed and is unbalanced in its representation of the views of the Haitian majority. It's tantamount to attempting a coup d'état in the U.S. Haitian diaspora to give legitimacy to positions that hold no water with the Haitian masses.

I would say, based on the e-mail below and the compiled list of those qualified to "discuss Haiti's future," that Ron Daniels is as clueless today as he was last year when he tried, with Frandley Julien as his spokesperson in Haiti, to bamboozle the African-American intelligentsia, scholars, activists and well-meaning celebrities, such as Danny Glover and other unsuspecting Black Americans, to join him in supporting and collaborating with the "Group of 184" and the Latortue death regime in Haiti in the name of celebrating our ancestors' bicentennial.

Despite Ron Daniel's high-placed friends, the August 2004 "Cruising into History" project failed because it collaborated with putschists. Daniels didn't succeed then and is plainly looking to humiliate himself once again.

Larouze fè banda tout tan soley pa leve.
Nou pap bay legen!
Grenadye alaso!

HLLN's position is clear. Those who took up arms against the constitutional government or participated in the destabilization along with high-ranking officials within the U.S./Canada/France are responsible for the bloodletting in Haiti right now. They are neither freedom fighters nor "honest brokers" for Haiti. Their propaganda must be countered. The truth about Haiti and its interminably long struggle for respect, self-determination and justice must see the light of day. Dialogue is essential. But based on his own actions with "Cruising Into History" and now with this thinly veiled attempt to marginalize pro-democracy advocates, Ron Daniels is showing that he is the least qualified to facilitate truthful, positive dialogue and workable solutions to the post-coup d'état human rights debacle and general instability in Haiti.

Below is the Haiti Support Project's letter about the symposium and the list of confirmed and unconfirmed invitees.

National/International Symposium
The Future of Democracy and Development in Haiti
March 17-18, Washington, D.C.

Dear Invitee:

If you have not confirmed your attendance/participation in the National/International Symposium on the Future of Democracy and Development in Haiti, we sincerely hope you will do so immediately. Confirmations are steadily coming in. Thus far the following individuals and/or organizations have indicated they will attend/participate for all or part of the Symposium:

Congressman John Conyers, Jr., Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee, Congressional Black Caucus
Congressman Gregory Meeks, Congressional Black Caucus
Marc Morial, President/CEO, National Urban League
Dr. Joseph Baptiste, President National Organization for the Advancement of Haitians (NOAH)
Hillary Shelton, Director, Washington Bureau, NAACP
Leslie Voltaire, former Minister for Haitians Living Abroad, Haiti
Roy Hastick, President/CEO, Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Jocelyn McCalla, Executive Director, National Coalition for Haitian Rights
Frandley Julien, National Civic Movement, Haiti
Leonard Dunston, President, Emeritus, National Association of Black Social Workers
Lionel Pressoir, SHRAC, Haiti
Dr. C. Delores Tucker, President, National Congress of Black Women
Joe Thelusca, President/CEO, Global Access Partners, LLC
Joe Leonard, Ph.D., Executive Director, National Black Leadership Forum
Jean Claude Martineau, former Dir. of Education and Culture, National Television of Haiti
Robert Maguire, Ph.D., Director of Programs in International Affairs, Trinity College
Lionel Delatour, Center for Free Enterprise and Democracy, Haiti
Rev. Justus Brutus, Director of Missions, Progressive National BaptistConvention
Marc Prou, Executive Director, Haiti Studies Association
Damu Smith, Co-Founder, Black Voices for Peace
Dr. Gilbert Parks, Chairman Emeritus, National Medical Association
Selena Mendy Singleton, Vice-President, Trans Africa Forum
James Morrell, Director, Haiti Democracy Project
Derrick Humphries, Black Congress of Law, Health and Economics
Jocelyne Mayas, Queens Empowerment Coalition for Haitian Immigrants
Ron Hampton, Executive Director, National Black Police Association
Gabriel Marcella, (will send a position paper on trusteeship based on a Miami Herald article)

Latest Confirmations
Marc Bazin, Mouvement Pour l' Instauration de la Démocratie en Haïti
Anselme Remy, Professor, University of Haiti
Martineau Guerrier, MD, former Senator, Haitian National Assembly
Serge Parisien, NOAH
Gary Flowers, National Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Representing Rev. Jesse Jackson
Alix Baptiste, Minister for Haitians Living Abroad, Interim Government of Haiti
James Gomez, Director of International Affairs, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition
Eugenia Charles, Executive Director, Fondasyon Mapou
Jean Claude Desgranges, M.D., Haiti
Dr. Evalliere Beauplan, DDS, former Senator, Haitian National Assembly
Cyllay, IFESJosette Desir, National Civic Movement, Haiti
Winifred Chauvel, Executive Director, Haitian Leadership Foundation
Mike Benge, Senior Forestry Advisor, USAID
Suzette Jean-Baptiste, National Civic Movement, Haiti

We are delighted that a number of leading African American civil rights, human rights, religious and professional organizations/institutions have already agreed to participate in the Symposium, and we expect more within the next few days. This is important because the Haiti Support Project is committed to building a constituency for Haiti in the United States with a priority on engaging African Americans to impact policy towards the first Black Republic in the hemisphere and facilitate the mobilization of humanitarian and developmental assistance to contribute to improving the quality of life of the Haitian people. The Trans Africa Forum is also doing some important work in this area.

As indicated in the initial Save-the-Date Email Notice and Invitation, the goal of this important Symposium is to facilitate a serious and substantive assessment and dialogue about the state of affairs in Haiti with the objective of creating or contributing to momentum towards positive, workable solutions to Haiti's social, economic and political crises. In some respects the Symposium could be characterized as a modest effort to complement the initiative recently launched by the African Union at the behest of the Government of South Africa. The Haiti Support Project believes that constructive ideas can and must be generated in several quarters in order to contribute to the process of democracy and development in Haiti in a principled manner.

As I wrote in a recent article, "the Haiti Support Project ... firmly believes that Haiti can best be served by organizations, institutions and individuals who can function as honest brokers, mediators and facilitators, people who are not tied to or committed to any political party, organization or personality within the broad array of progressive forces in the popular movement for democracy in Haiti." It is in this spirit that we have reached out to a broad range of organizations and individuals to engage in a dialogue at this Symposium. Everyone who has been invited is considered a resource person with something to contribute to the process and all ideas are on the table for discussion.

HSP's ideas are colored by our primary commitment, which is to the long suffering Haitian masses. We will always strive to be on their side and we make no apology for our position in that regard. Accordingly, at appropriate moments during the Symposium, we will offer views and ideas which we believe are consistent with that commitment.

Your participation in the Symposium can help make it a meaningful and productive exercise. Therefore, we hope you will make every effort to attend/participate. Formal letters are in the process of being mailed out.

However, we need your confirmation via phone or email asap! Please contact Ka Flewellen immediately by email at HSP3971770 or call 202-397-1770.

Yours in the struggle,

Ron Daniels, Founder,
Haiti Support Project